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The Fire Engine That Disappeared
Steven Mackintosh stars as Martin Beck, with Neil Pearson as Lennart Kollberg, in this BBC Radio 4 dramatization of The Fire Engine that Disappeared, translated by Joan Tate and dramatized by Katie Hims.
In The Fire Engine that Disappeared, adapted from the fifth book, the apartment of a suspect being staked out by Beck’s team explodes, killing three people. Arson and murder aren’t at first suspected, but it soon becomes clear that the fire was started on purpose.
The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever created. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction. Before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working alongside his colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden’s seemingly liberal, democratic society."
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 - 24 November 2012.
In The Fire Engine that Disappeared, adapted from the fifth book, the apartment of a suspect being staked out by Beck’s team explodes, killing three people. Arson and murder aren’t at first suspected, but it soon becomes clear that the fire was started on purpose.
The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever created. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction. Before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working alongside his colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden’s seemingly liberal, democratic society."
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 - 24 November 2012.
- GenresCrime
1 pages, Audio CD
First published December 6, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 15, 2022
I think this is the 5th book in the Martin Beck series and this is a cd of the fantastic BBC production with Steven Macintosh as Beck and the wonderful Neil Pearson as Lennart Kollberg. I love these BBC productions of the husband and wife writing team of Per Wahloo and May Sjowall, because I just love the voices of Beck and Kollberg particularly, they really bring the book to life and their everyday interactions (particularly from Neil Pearson) adds so much more to the story. This being the audio version is the one I have been listening to in the car so I listen to this in bits and pieces over time.
The team are trailing a team of baddies and are watching a flat of one of them and are just about to move in and arrest him when the flat explodes into a ball of flame and is burning down to the ground at a ferocious rate. Larsson (played beautifully by the brilliant Mikael Persbrandt in the Swedish series in the mid 2000s) rushes into the flat but is beaten back by the flames but in one of the upper windows of the flat a young woman shouts at him to catch and throws her baby out of the window, amazingly he caught it and then she begins throwing her other children out of the window and another young girl throws herself out at him but he wasn't expecting that and hit the ground. He managed to single handedly save several people and young children, the press called him a hero. He ended up in hospital with severe burns.
Later they discovered that the man in the flat who was found dead on a mattress in the middle of the floor, was blown up by a pre-timed detonator inside his mattress. Now Beck is thinking of terrorists. And he wasn't far off. It transpired that Beck and his team were watching this man because they believed he was involved with a gang of international smugglers, who stole highly sought after cars and gave them false number plates, resprayed them, and sold them off at equally high prices to overseas buyers. Was this a falling out between thieves?
The investigation continues at a not too fast pace, well this was set in the 60s/70s so when Doris, the girl who took the call for a fire engine, had gone on holiday for 3 weeks, the team had to just wait for her to get back. She turned out to be very useful because as a telephone operator for the emergency services she was good with voices, and useful about where the old style telephone phone boxes were etc, as she had heard the coins drop. The missing fire engine in question is the one which was ordered at exactly the same time as the building blew up and disappeared and a second one was sent. It got a little complicated around this point and I wondered if the cd was slightly truncated, which would be a bit unusual for the BBC.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, as I have done with the others. I think I have around 8 or 9 of this series of 10 plays by the BBC and I mean to check which ones I am missing and set about scouring places online for find them! In fact I think I will do that this afternoon, after all I've only got the lawn to mow now.
The team are trailing a team of baddies and are watching a flat of one of them and are just about to move in and arrest him when the flat explodes into a ball of flame and is burning down to the ground at a ferocious rate. Larsson (played beautifully by the brilliant Mikael Persbrandt in the Swedish series in the mid 2000s) rushes into the flat but is beaten back by the flames but in one of the upper windows of the flat a young woman shouts at him to catch and throws her baby out of the window, amazingly he caught it and then she begins throwing her other children out of the window and another young girl throws herself out at him but he wasn't expecting that and hit the ground. He managed to single handedly save several people and young children, the press called him a hero. He ended up in hospital with severe burns.
Later they discovered that the man in the flat who was found dead on a mattress in the middle of the floor, was blown up by a pre-timed detonator inside his mattress. Now Beck is thinking of terrorists. And he wasn't far off. It transpired that Beck and his team were watching this man because they believed he was involved with a gang of international smugglers, who stole highly sought after cars and gave them false number plates, resprayed them, and sold them off at equally high prices to overseas buyers. Was this a falling out between thieves?
The investigation continues at a not too fast pace, well this was set in the 60s/70s so when Doris, the girl who took the call for a fire engine, had gone on holiday for 3 weeks, the team had to just wait for her to get back. She turned out to be very useful because as a telephone operator for the emergency services she was good with voices, and useful about where the old style telephone phone boxes were etc, as she had heard the coins drop. The missing fire engine in question is the one which was ordered at exactly the same time as the building blew up and disappeared and a second one was sent. It got a little complicated around this point and I wondered if the cd was slightly truncated, which would be a bit unusual for the BBC.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, as I have done with the others. I think I have around 8 or 9 of this series of 10 plays by the BBC and I mean to check which ones I am missing and set about scouring places online for find them! In fact I think I will do that this afternoon, after all I've only got the lawn to mow now.
August 16, 2018
I don't think that the real book deserved only one star. However, I'm listening to an audio book. And it's not even that, it's a radio play. The quality is rather bad, the volume differs a lot and when listening to audio books in the car I really have a problem with that.
In the end I missed the gist of the story. I don't even know who the killer was.
In the end I missed the gist of the story. I don't even know who the killer was.
April 10, 2014
Riverting beginning featuring an explosion and the saving of lives from a house fire, this dramatisation is a slick production. A story that doesn't really feature Martin Beck but Detective Larsson more so. Ends so suddenly - I wanted more. A great series.
November 30, 2018
Here you see the strong connection to Ed McBain. A lot of moving parts and some fascinating characters
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews